ELIZABETH WILLARD, the mother of George Willard,
was tall and gaunt and her face was marked with
smallpox scars. Although she was but forty-five,
some obscure disease had taken the fire out of her
figure. Listlessly she went about the disorderly old
hotel looking at the faded wall-paper and the ragged
carpets and, when she was able to be about, doing
the work of a chambermaid among beds soiled by
the slumbers of fat traveling men. Her husband,
Tom Willard, a slender, graceful man with square
shoulders, a quick military step, and a black mustache trained to turn sharply up at the ends, tried
to put the wife out of his mind. The presence of the
tall ghostly figure, moving slowly through the halls,
he took as a reproach to himself. When he thought
of her he grew angry and swore. The hotel was unprofitable and forever on the edge of failure and he
wished himself out of it. He thought of the old
house and the woman who lived there with him as
things defeated and done for. The hotel in which he
had begun life so hopefully was now a mere ghost
of what a hotel should be. As he went spruce and
business-like through the streets of Winesburg, he
sometimes stopped and turned quickly about as
though fearing that the spirit of the hotel and of
the woman would follow him even into the streets.
"Damn such a life, damn it!" he sputtered aimlessly.
Tom Willard had a passion for village politics and
for years had been the leading Democrat in a
strongly Republican community. Some day, he told
himself, the fide of things political will turn in my
favor and the years of ineffectual service count big
in the bestowal of rewards. He dreamed of going to
Congress and even of becoming governor. Once
when a younger member of the party arose at a
political conference and began to boast of his faithful
service, Tom Willard grew white with fury. "Shut
up, you," he roared, glaring about. "What do you
know of service? What are you but a boy? Look at
what I've done here! I was a Democrat here in
Winesburg when it was a crime to be a Democrat.
In the old days they fairly hunted us with guns."
Between Elizabeth and her one son George there
was a deep unexpressed bond of sympathy, based
on a girlhood dream that had long ago died. In the
son's presence she was timid and reserved, but
sometimes while he hurried about town intent upon
his duties as a reporter, she went into his room and
closing the door knelt by a little desk, made of a
kitchen table, that sat near a window. In the room
by the desk she went through a ceremony that was
half a prayer, half a demand, addressed to the skies.
In the boyish figure she yearned to see something
half forgotten that had once been a part of herself recreated. The prayer concerned that. "Even though I
die, I will in some way keep defeat from you," she
cried, and so deep was her determination that her
whole body shook. Her eyes glowed and she clenched
her fists. "If I am dead and see him becoming a
meaningless drab figure like myself, I will come
back," she declared. "I ask God now to give me that
privilege. I demand it. I will pay for it. God may
beat me with his fists. I will take any blow that may
befall if but this my boy be allowed to express something for us both." Pausing uncertainly, the woman
stared about the boy's room. "And do not let him
become smart and successful either," she added
vaguely.
The communion between George Willard and his
mother was outwardly a formal thing without meaning. When she was ill and sat by the window in her
room he sometimes went in the evening to make
her a visit. They sat by a window that looked over
the roof of a small frame building into Main Street.
By turning their heads they could see through another window, along an alleyway that ran behind
the Main Street stores and into the back door of
Abner Groff's bakery. Sometimes as they sat thus a
picture of village life presented itself to them. At the
back door of his shop appeared Abner Groff with a
stick or an empty milk bottle in his hand. For a long
time there was a feud between the baker and a grey
cat that belonged to Sylvester West, the druggist.
The boy and his mother saw the cat creep into the
door of the bakery and presently emerge followed
by the baker, who swore and waved his arms about.
The baker's eyes were small and red and his black
hair and beard were filled with flour dust. Sometimes he was so angry that, although the cat had
disappeared, he hurled sticks, bits of broken glass,
and even some of the tools of his trade about. Once
he broke a window at the back of Sinning's Hardware Store. In the alley the grey cat crouched behind
barrels filled with torn paper and broken bottles
above which flew a black swarm of flies. Once when
she was alone, and after watching a prolonged and
ineffectual outburst on the part of the baker, Elizabeth Willard put her head down on her long white
hands and wept. After that she did not look along
the alleyway any more, but tried to forget the contest between the bearded man and the cat. It seemed
like a rehearsal of her own life, terrible in its
vividness.
In the evening when the son sat in the room with
his mother, the silence made them both feel awkward. Darkness came on and the evening train came
in at the station. In the street below feet tramped
up and down upon a board sidewalk. In the station
yard, after the evening train had gone, there was a
heavy silence. Perhaps Skinner Leason, the express
agent, moved a truck the length of the station platform. Over on Main Street sounded a man's voice,
laughing. The door of the express office banged.
George Willard arose and crossing the room fumbled
for the doorknob. Sometimes he knocked against a
chair, making it scrape along the floor. By the window sat the sick woman, perfectly still, listless. Her
long hands, white and bloodless, could be seen
drooping over the ends of the arms of the chair. "I
think you had better be out among the boys. You
are too much indoors," she said, striving to relieve
the embarrassment of the departure. "I thought I
would take a walk," replied George Willard, who
felt awkward and confused.
One evening in July, when the transient guests
who made the New Willard House their temporary
home had become scarce, and the hallways, lighted
only by kerosene lamps turned low, were plunged
in gloom, Elizabeth Willard had an adventure. She
had been ill in bed for several days and her son had
not come to visit her. She was alarmed. The feeble
blaze of life that remained in her body was blown
into a flame by her anxiety and she crept out of bed,
dressed and hurried along the hallway toward her
son's room, shaking with exaggerated fears. As she
went along she steadied herself with her hand,
slipped along the papered walls of the hall and
breathed with difficulty. The air whistled through
her teeth. As she hurried forward she thought how
foolish she was. "He is concerned with boyish affairs," she told herself. "Perhaps he has now begun
to walk about in the evening with girls."
Elizabeth Willard had a dread of being seen by
guests in the hotel that had once belonged to her
father and the ownership of which still stood recorded in her name in the county courthouse. The
hotel was continually losing patronage because of its
shabbiness and she thought of herself as also shabby.
Her own room was in an obscure corner and when
she felt able to work she voluntarily worked among
the beds, preferring the labor that could be done
when the guests were abroad seeking trade among
the merchants of Winesburg.
By the door of her son's room the mother knelt
upon the floor and listened for some sound from
within. When she heard the boy moving about and
talking in low tones a smile came to her lips. George
Willard had a habit of talking aloud to himself and
to hear him doing so had always given his mother
a peculiar pleasure. The habit in him, she felt,
strengthened the secret bond that existed between
them. A thousand times she had whispered to herself of the matter. "He is groping about, trying to
find himself," she thought. "He is not a dull clod, all
words and smartness. Within him there is a secret
something that is striving to grow. It is the thing I
let be killed in myself."
In the darkness in the hallway by the door the
sick woman arose and started again toward her own
room. She was afraid that the door would open and
the boy come upon her. When she had reached a
safe distance and was about to turn a corner into a
second hallway she stopped and bracing herself
with her hands waited, thinking to shake off a
trembling fit of weakness that had come upon her.
The presence of the boy in the room had made her
happy. In her bed, during the long hours alone, the
little fears that had visited her had become giants.
Now they were all gone. "When I get back to my
room I shall sleep," she murmured gratefully.
But Elizabeth Willard was not to return to her bed
and to sleep. As she stood trembling in the darkness
the door of her son's room opened and the boy's
father, Tom Willard, stepped out. In the light that
steamed out at the door he stood with the knob in
his hand and talked. What he said infuriated the
woman.
Tom Willard was ambitious for his son. He had
always thought of himself as a successful man, although nothing he had ever done had turned out
successfully. However, when he was out of sight of
the New Willard House and had no fear of coming
upon his wife, he swaggered and began to dramatize himself as one of the chief men of the town. He
wanted his son to succeed. He it was who had secured for the boy the position on the Winesburg
Eagle. Now, with a ring of earnestness in his voice,
he was advising concerning some course of conduct.
"I tell you what, George, you've got to wake up,"
he said sharply. "Will Henderson has spoken to me
three times concerning the matter. He says you go
along for hours not hearing when you are spoken
to and acting like a gawky girl. What ails you?" Tom
Willard laughed good-naturedly. "Well, I guess
you'll get over it," he said. "I told Will that. You're
not a fool and you're not a woman. You're Tom
Willard's son and you'll wake up. I'm not afraid.
What you say clears things up. If being a newspaper
man had put the notion of becoming a writer into
your mind that's all right. Only I guess you'll have
to wake up to do that too, eh?"
Tom Willard went briskly along the hallway and
down a flight of stairs to the office. The woman in
the darkness could hear him laughing and talking
with a guest who was striving to wear away a dull
evening by dozing in a chair by the office door. She
returned to the door of her son's room. The weakness had passed from her body as by a miracle and
she stepped boldly along. A thousand ideas raced
through her head. When she heard the scraping of
a chair and the sound of a pen scratching upon
paper, she again turned and went back along the
hallway to her own room.
A definite determination had come into the mind
of the defeated wife of the Winesburg hotel keeper.
The determination was the result of long years of
quiet and rather ineffectual thinking. "Now," she
told herself, "I will act. There is something threatening my boy and I will ward it off." The fact that the
conversation between Tom Willard and his son had
been rather quiet and natural, as though an understanding existed between them, maddened her. Although for years she had hated her husband, her
hatred had always before been a quite impersonal
thing. He had been merely a part of something else
that she hated. Now, and by the few words at the
door, he had become the thing personified. In the
darkness of her own room she clenched her fists
and glared about. Going to a cloth bag that hung on
a nail by the wall she took out a long pair of sewing
scissors and held them in her hand like a dagger. "I
will stab him," she said aloud. "He has chosen to
be the voice of evil and I will kill him. When I have
killed him something will snap within myself and I
will die also. It will be a release for all of us."
In her girlhood and before her marriage with Tom
Willard, Elizabeth had borne a somewhat shaky reputation in Winesburg. For years she had been what
is called "stage-struck" and had paraded through
the streets with traveling men guests at her father's
hotel, wearing loud clothes and urging them to tell
her of life in the cities out of which they had come.
Once she startled the town by putting on men's
clothes and riding a bicycle down Main Street.
In her own mind the tall dark girl had been in
those days much confused. A great restlessness was
in her and it expressed itself in two ways. First there
was an uneasy desire for change, for some big definite movement to her life. It was this feeling that
had turned her mind to the stage. She dreamed of
joining some company and wandering over the
world, seeing always new faces and giving something out of herself to all people. Sometimes at night
she was quite beside herself with the thought, but
when she tried to talk of the matter to the members
of the theatrical companies that came to Winesburg
and stopped at her father's hotel, she got nowhere.
They did not seem to know what she meant, or if
she did get something of her passion expressed,
they only laughed. "It's not like that," they said.
"It's as dull and uninteresting as this here. Nothing
comes of it."
With the traveling men when she walked about
with them, and later with Tom Willard, it was quite
different. Always they seemed to understand and
sympathize with her. On the side streets of the village, in the darkness under the trees, they took hold
of her hand and she thought that something unexpressed in herself came forth and became a part of
an unexpressed something in them.
And then there was the second expression of her
restlessness. When that came she felt for a time released and happy. She did not blame the men who
walked with her and later she did not blame Tom
Willard. It was always the same, beginning with
kisses and ending, after strange wild emotions, with
peace and then sobbing repentance. When she
sobbed she put her hand upon the face of the man
and had always the same thought. Even though he
were large and bearded she thought he had become
suddenly a little boy. She wondered why he did not
sob also.
In her room, tucked away in a corner of the old
Willard House, Elizabeth Willard lighted a lamp and
put it on a dressing table that stood by the door. A
thought had come into her mind and she went to a
closet and brought out a small square box and set it
on the table. The box contained material for makeup and had been left with other things by a theatrical
company that had once been stranded in Winesburg. Elizabeth Willard had decided that she would
be beautiful. Her hair was still black and there was
a great mass of it braided and coiled about her head.
The scene that was to take place in the office below
began to grow in her mind. No ghostly worn-out
figure should confront Tom Willard, but something
quite unexpected and startling. Tall and with dusky
cheeks and hair that fell in a mass from her shoulders, a figure should come striding down the stairway before the startled loungers in the hotel office.
The figure would be silent--it would be swift and
terrible. As a tigress whose cub had been threatened
would she appear, coming out of the shadows, stealing noiselessly along and holding the long wicked
scissors in her hand.
With a little broken sob in her throat, Elizabeth
Willard blew out the light that stood upon the table
and stood weak and trembling in the darkness. The
strength that had been as a miracle in her body left
and she half reeled across the floor, clutching at the
back of the chair in which she had spent so many
long days staring out over the tin roofs into the main
street of Winesburg. In the hallway there was the
sound of footsteps and George Willard came in at
the door. Sitting in a chair beside his mother he
began to talk. "I'm going to get out of here," he
said. "I don't know where I shall go or what I shall
do but I am going away."
The woman in the chair waited and trembled. An
impulse came to her. "I suppose you had better
wake up," she said. "You think that? You will go
to the city and make money, eh? It will be better for
you, you think, to be a business man, to be brisk
and smart and alive?" She waited and trembled.
The son shook his head. "I suppose I can't make
you understand, but oh, I wish I could," he said
earnestly. "I can't even talk to father about it. I don't
try. There isn't any use. I don't know what I shall
do. I just want to go away and look at people and
think."
Silence fell upon the room where the boy and
woman sat together. Again, as on the other evenings, they were embarrassed. After a time the boy
tried again to talk. "I suppose it won't be for a year
or two but I've been thinking about it," he said,
rising and going toward the door. "Something father
said makes it sure that I shall have to go away." He
fumbled with the doorknob. In the room the silence
became unbearable to the woman. She wanted to
cry out with joy because of the words that had come
from the lips of her son, but the expression of joy
had become impossible to her. "I think you had better go out among the boys. You are too much indoors," she said. "I thought I would go for a little
walk," replied the son stepping awkwardly out of
the room and closing the door.
Paper Pills